Samuel Bogumił Linde (Toruń, 11 or 24 April 1771 – 8 August 1847, Warsaw) was a linguist, librarian, and lexicographer of the Polish language. He was director of the Prussian-founded Warsaw Lyceum during its existence (1804–31), and an important figure of the Polish Enlightenment.
Contents |
Samuel Gottlieb Linde was born in Toruń, Royal Prussia, a province of the Kingdom of Poland, to Jan Jacobsen Linde, a master locksmith and member of the city council who had immigrated from Sweden, and Anna Barbara, née Langenhann. His mother's family originated from Coburg.[1] His second name Gottlieb has been rendered in Polish as Bogumił. Linde came from a German speaking family but was fluent in Polish and served as a lector of Polish at University of Leipzig where he had previously studied theology and philology. In 1793 he began to collaborate with supporters of the Constitution of May 3, 1791. During the Kościuszko Uprising (1794) he was in Warsaw and supported Hugo Kołłątaj.
In 1795–1803 he was a librarian to Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński and began gathering material for his future dictionary. In 1800 he was invited to join the Warsaw Society of Friends of Learning. As director of the Warsaw Lyceum during its existence, 1804–31, Linde hired Frédéric Chopin's father, Nicolas Chopin, as a teacher of French language. The composer himself studied at the Lyceum in 1823–26.
Linde was a Lutheran and is buried at the Evangelical Cemetery of the Augsburg Confession in Warsaw. He married Ludwika Nussbaum, originally from Switzerland. Their daughter Ludwika Emilia Izabela married Leopold Otto, a Lutheran pastor.
Linde's major work was Słownik języka polskiego (Dictionary of the Polish Language), a six-volume monolingual dictionary, of lasting importance for Slavic lexicography, published in Warsaw in 1807–14. It was the first major dictionary of the Polish language.